


Desiderium Cordis

by softiebee



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Trope Challenge [11]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (more of), 30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge, Fluff, M/M, Rachel! (Adam's Cool Study Buddy), Trent! (Adam's Aggressively Preppy Roommate), featuring:, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8280241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softiebee/pseuds/softiebee
Summary: Adam is lonely at college, and Ronan can't have that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> from the prompt: college
> 
> this is a work of fiction. all characters (except trent) belong to maggie steifvater and the raven cycle series.

“Jesus Christ,” Ronan said, kicking a box aside so he could make his way to Adam’s bare mattress. “This place is fucking tiny. You paid seventy grand for this bullshit?” 

“ _No_ ,” Adam responded, already annoyed and carrying four shoeboxes. “What’s even in these?”

“Told you,” Ronan pushed his tongue into his cheek. “Can’t look in ‘em unless you’re desperate.”

“So not shoes.”

“Fuck, no. I’m not boring, Parrish. Shoes in shoeboxes? Please.”

Adam shook his head and put down the stack on his bedside table, then linked his hands behind his head and stretched back until he felt a satisfying crack. From where he had stretched out on Adam’s bed, Ronan cracked open one eye and looked Adam up and down, unguarded and lazily slow, before shifting his gaze to the open door. 

“Is your roommate showing up?”

Adam sighed. “I am not having sex with you on a bare mattress surrounded by thousands of unpacked boxes.” 

“You don’t have enough shit to even fill ten boxes.” Ronan’s voice carried his pout more than his face did; it was a rare thing on its own, but Adam hadn’t turned to look at him and he could still see the amused tilt of Ronan’s chin and the wandering half-petulance in his eyes.

“Stop looking at my butt.”

“Why? If you’re going to deny me a quick fix of intimacy before you leave me for years and years, I should at least be allowed to admire your ass from across the room.”

“It’s not years,” Adam said, but his voice cracked. Ronan sat up.

“Hey. Hey-” he reached out and pulled Adam to him, holding him with strong arms around his waist, and tilted his chin up to catch Adam’s mouth. Adam softened against him, breathing him in, and when Ronan pulled back, Adam followed him, quick and desperate. Ronan kissed him until he couldn’t breathe, and then until he could again. 

“You’re damn right it’s not years,” Ronan said. Something in his voice had an edge, but then, everything about Ronan had an edge somewhere. “I think Opal would fucking destroy me if I let you get away and not come back to the Barns. And we’re visiting. Have I mentioned that? Have I mentioned we’re visiting? Because we are. I already bought a cot for the brat.” 

“You did? Where are you sleeping?”

“Should I buy another cot for myself, Parrish? Christ-” Ronan kissed him again, shortly, knotting his fingers in the front of Adam’s T-shirt. 

Adam tried to imagine it, tried to imagine Opal on a cot on the floor, and him and Ronan packed tightly into the same bed like they would at the Barns, all of them just across the room from someone else, someone so strange to Adam it almost hurt. The picture of it came so easily Adam wasn’t sure why he hadn’t tried before, and then realized that he probably had. There was a creaking, and everything about Ronan tensed under Adam’s hands. He looked up and over his shoulder, and across the room, someone who looked like a shorter, tanner Gansey raised his chin to them in greeting. 

“‘Sup,” he said, and eyed Ronan’s hands (still very much taken up in Adam’s shirt). He had a distinct drawl - nothing like Adam’s subtle Henrietta drag - and his hands were stuffed deep into the pockets of a pair of chinos. “I’m Trent.”

“Adam,” Adam responded, pulling away from Ronan to shake Trent’s hand. “I’m your roommate. This is Ronan.”

“Hey, man.” Trent stretched out a hand, which Ronan ignored in favor of examining his leather bracelets. Adam looked pained. 

“Help you with anything?” He offered, swinging a leg over one of his own boxes. “I should unpack, but…” 

“Yeah, totally,” Trent agreed. “I have a lot of stuff to bring in. Goddamn, is this all you have? Wish I’d have thought to pack that light. This room is fucking tiny, man. I’m gonna have to pull some Mary Poppins shit in here.” Shaking his head, he stepped out of the room again, calling over his shoulder to Adam, “My truck’s parked right outside the door!”

Ronan looked up. Finally. “I’m getting you noise-cancelling headphones for Christmas.”

“Way to ruin the surprise.” Adam rolled his eyes. “Why?”

“That guy” - Ronan’s eyes flicked disdainfully to the door - “is going to play the loudest fucking country music you can imagine.”

-

Ronan was right. 

Adam had never met someone who was simultaneously an unassuming rich asshole and an insufferable hick. _Hick_ was a word he used lightly - it had been held against him so many times in his freshman year at Aglionby that he had to forget it entirely for two months and then re-learn it - but there was no other way to describe the monstrosity that was Trent. Adam was having trouble finding words to describe even what was happening in texts to Ronan (who was actually using his phone, in the vaguely disgusted, sneering way that Ronan used his phone) so he had taken to sending video messages instead: of Trent playing strange mixes of country and EDM, of his camouflage pillowcases, of the time he’d started to color-code all the polo shirts in his closet and Adam was wading through expensive collars for a week. It was exhausting.

Though, at this point, Adam might have been exhausted from other things, too. Law was difficult. Even his intro course to forensics was unfortunately placed at 8:30 on Fridays, and his professor had them taking so many notes that Adam had gone through four pens already in that class alone. The people on his floor were loud, and more often than not, when Trent wasn’t out of the room, he brought them with him into it: miles and miles of pressed chinos, boat shoes, camouflage belts and hats and wristbands, girls in tight dresses and tan skin, all chattering, all part of an inside joke that Adam didn’t get. And really, he was exhausted from missing Ronan. From missing the Barns.

From missing _home_.

-

When Adam let himself into the room on Friday night, it was empty. No Trent, and no Rachel leaning against his doorway with takeout bags and binders full of notes and articles to analyze. Tonight, the hall was quiet, and the room was cold. Adam felt more at home than he thought he should in the silence. There was just so much space. 

He kicked the door shut and stripped out of his jacket, tossing it onto his bed. He was the one carrying a takeout bag now; he had found a new job at a Thai restaurant, and getting free meals once a week was one of the perks. He set it down on his desk and melted into his chair, propping his feet up on Trent’s unholy pillow. Letting his head loll back, Adam let the peace sink into him, felt it wash through every inch of skin. He got like this all the time, almost by accident, at the Barns. When he was leaning against the counter. When he was following Ronan on the paths. When Opal started chewing her sleeves while they watched movies. 

It wasn’t the same here. 

A sharp sound made Adam jump, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. _Video call from LYNCH, RONAN,_ it declared, and Adam still had to read it twice before answering. Ronan’s shaved head blinked into focus, too close to the camera.

“Hey,” Adam said. 

“Heard that shit’s for horses,” Ronan responded, but he was smiling, the soft kind that Adam only saw too late or too early in the day. “Greet me properly.”

“What, without even a hello from you?” Adam leaned forward, turning back towards the desk so he could prop himself up on his elbow. “This is very one-sided.”

“ _Hello, Adam._ ”

He studied Ronan for a second, letting his eyes drink him in: his high cheekbones, his dark skin, the shock of his light eyes from under charcoal lashes. The missing twisted in his stomach.

“Gonna stare for the whole call? You know, I’ve heard pictures last longer. Got any of those?”

“Unfortunately not,” Adam said dryly. “You’ll have to show up and let me take some.”

Ronan’s eyes sparked. “A photoshoot? Kinky, Parrish, but I’m game. You any good with a camera?”

“Fuck off.” Laughter bubbled up in Adam’s throat, the relieved kind, the kind that reminded him that Ronan was still reachable, if not touchable. 

“I’m taking that as a no,” Ronan mused. “Maybe I’ll have to take your picture.”

“I don’t have to show you any of my best angles.”

“Why do you think I need you to?”

Adam didn’t have a good response to this. To avoid answering, he studied Ronan in the frame, frowning as he noticed an unfamiliar background.

“Where are you?”

“Right. That.” Ronan fumbled the camera for a second. “What did you say your room number was?”

Adam sat suddenly upright in his chair. “You’re _here_?”

“Not yet,” Ronan said, but he was already lighting up. This was another, rarer smile. Adam could count the times he had seen it on one hand. “If you would just tell me your damn room number, I might-”

“344. Where are you? I can come and meet you. Jesus, fuck, Ronan-”

He stretched his arm out, and the camera showed Adam a grainy picture of a restaurant two blocks down. 

“I’m coming to meet you,” Adam said decisively, and hung up the phone, snatching his jacket from the bed and slamming the door behind him.

-

It was hard to keep himself from running, but he managed. The sidewalks were crowded with people, none of them moving the way Ronan moved. Where had Ronan been? Down this block, or down the next? Had Adam passed him already? Worry was growing in his stomach, eating away at the burst of excitement that had settled there. He had only been here for so long. Getting lost was easier to do than was said, and while he recognized the shops now, he might not if he kept turning.

The rational part of Adam’s brain told him that Ronan would have seen him if he had walked past, that Ronan was looking for Adam as much as Adam was looking for him. Possibly more; Adam had enough to distract himself with at Princeton that he could sometimes drown missing Ronan in acres of text and stacks of articles, but Ronan, while having as much to tend to at the Barns, had endless space and time to think.

Adam took another left turn, down the same block he had been circling for ten minutes, and let his eyes flick over the push and pull of people until they caught on someone tall and dark standing next to a parking sign.

Ronan.

Or maybe not Ronan. Adam was already walking faster, but it could be someone else with Ronan’s hair, with Ronan’s posture, with Ronan’s leather bracelets on his arm, someone else turning to have Ronan’s profile and Ronan’s eyes and Ronan’s mouth-

“Thank fuck. I thought you were lost.” 

“I wouldn’t get lost,” Adam replied indignantly, but let Ronan pull him in anyway. He was incredibly solid, incredibly real, with a pulse and a warmth that was so familiar it was hard to swallow. Adam could breathe him and nothing else for years at a time.

When he eventually pulled back, Ronan picked up a bag Adam hadn’t noticed and slung it over his shoulder. “About that photoshoot-”

“Shut up,” Adam said, lacing their fingers together. Ronan brought his hand to his mouth.

“I missed you,” he whispered, and Adam’s skin kept the secret.

**Author's Note:**

> when u get distracted from writing bc a cute girl is texting you  
> the next prompt is seven minutes in heaven. thank you so much to those of you keeping up with this series! i'd give you the entire world if i could
> 
> comments and kudos make my day! you can find me on tumblr at [c-beswater](http://c-beswater.tumblr.com/).


End file.
